Global award for MA Fine Art graduate

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Global award for MA Fine Art graduate

Artist and Bath Spa University MA Fine Art graduate, Fiona Campbell, has won a global arts award from Red Line Art Works, a UK-based global arts project.

The Red Line Art Works Award, which is presented annually, recognises art that addresses global concerns such as the climate and ecological emergencies.

Fiona won the award for her series of works ‘Snakes & Ladders', ‘Glut' and ‘Accretion'. She said: “I am absolutely delighted and hugely grateful to Red Line Art Works for the award. The news has been such a wonderful lift at this testing time. It was very novel to receive my trophy in the post!”

‘Glut’ and ‘Accretion’ were created as part of her MA Fine Art work at Bath Spa University and are singular yet connected works. ‘Glut’ was recently on exhibition as part of the Gilbert Bayes Award Winners Exhibition, Royal Society of Sculptors, London. It was scheduled to tour to Grizedale Sculpture, but halted by COVID19.

Fiona continued: “The work is a wailing, related to my increasing concerns about environmental issues: human imposition on nature, consumerism, waste, our plastic oceans, factory farming, mass extinctions. And the loss of my dog. Bodily forms made from found and recycled materials suggest entrails, abject yet seductive.”

‘Snakes and Ladders’ was created as site-responsive work for B-Wing, an Arts Council England-funded project Fiona co-curated in Shepton Mallet Prison. Interacting with the massive space, hand-crafted ladders made from found wood and paper spanned three floors.

Fiona added: “‘Snakes and Ladders’ alludes to the human cycle of striving, greed, suffering, hope. I was inspired by Piranesi’s ‘The Imaginary Prisons’ series.  One of the ladders suspended from the ceiling was reminiscent of flight and extinct animals hung in museums. In contrast, soft sculptural entrail forms dangled from the other ladders. They represented imaginary stairways of spiritual ascension and escape.

“The process of my work is labour-intensive. I collect materials from what’s around me - industrial and organic. The process of binding and stitching is a form of suturing, material as message."

Previous West Country-based Red Line Art Works Award winners include Luke Jerram and Rita Lazaro, making Fiona the third.

At the root of her practice is the notion of interconnectedness throughout nature, energy, life’s cyclical persistence and transformation. Increasingly, environmental concerns about human exploitation of nature and over-consumption inform the content, taking her work into the realm of ‘artivism’. 

In 2015 she was awarded Arts Council funding for an ambitious project titled ‘Step in Stone’ - site-specific artscapes in Mendip quarries with 14 international artists. Fiona curated the multidisciplinary event which linked culture, environment and community, engaging schoolchildren, families and adults in workshops, talks and other events, including a nationwide young people’s design and make competition.

She was also a Somerset Art Works Rep and Black Swan Arts Trustee for several years, and is currently part of the Black Swan Arts Programming Group.

To find out more about our MA Fine Art visit the course page.